Never
by Biancaneve
Summary: Shortly after episode 3.03, Much considers another euphemism which has played a confusing role in his life. Implied Much/Eve, Much/Kate, Allan/Djaq.


_A/N: I never expected to engage with season 3 to the extent of writing fic for it, but apparently this plot-bunny was part pitbull. This was written in response to 3.03 and is set a few days afterwards. _

_Big thanks go to bostonchickadee for beta-ing my first rusty attempt at fic in many many months._

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_**Never**_

The thought came to Much as he crested Locksley hill, hefting a bag full of bread over his shoulder. _These flowers were just coming into bloom when we came home from the Holy Land._

Well, they hadn't been exactly the _same _flowers, of course – these, now in the full flourish of early summer, were the boisterous grandchildren of the hopeful white blooms he and Robin had seen on that long-ago day, as they took this path out of the forest and caught their first sight of the village. _Home._

It had never occurred to him at the time that that first glimpse might be the last he would ever see of "home" as he remembered it – comfortable, commonplace, and inextricably linked in his memory with the scent of roasting pork. The Locksley he'd kept safe in his mind's eye had remained unchanged through five years at war half a world away, but two years close by in the forest had left him feeling as if the village he was now walking toward was a different place entirely. Much half suspected there was a hidden lever somewhere that would cause the whole hillside to swing open, like the secret door Will had fitted to the camp. Underneath would be the real Locksley, not this distorted copy where danger could lurk behind the cottages and cowsheds where he had played as a boy, and the villagers might greet you as a hero one day and curse you as a heretic the next. _Some_ of them had called him a halfwit in the old days, it was true, but at least they had been consistent about it.

But when they'd first returned, he hadn't had the faintest idea of what was to come, and so the tears in his eyes had been for joy and relief as he watched the smoke curling from the chimney of the Hall and made a promise to his aching muscles and growling stomach: "I will _never_ be cold or hungry again."

Things really had been simpler, then. That was when he had still thought that this hollow, restless ache in his chest was wholly attributable to want of food, that his hunger had simply grown so huge it could no longer be confined to his belly and had struck out in search of new territory. He looked again at the village below, then, frowning pensively, bent his nose to one of the flowers and inhaled its sweet, almost cloying perfume. _Would this work in a bath?_ he wondered.

Well, technically not a _bath_; a bucket of water heated over the fire would be about the best he could manage. He had never heard of putting wildflowers in wash-water - in his admittedly very limited experience on the matter, it had always been rose-petals. (_Not_ lavender, as Roy had always stridently insisted.) But rose petals were completely out of his reach, so perhaps these would have to do.

_Roy. _Much recalled how disgusted he'd been - _the grime, the stench of the man! _- when Roy first accosted them in the forest, never dreaming that two years on, he too would make decent people wrinkle their noses and recoil. Still, he consoled himself with the thought that he wasn't _quite_ as bad as Roy, who had simply been revolting, inside as well as out. No amount of soap and water would have changed that - any more than his self-imposed martyrdom had made Much think more fondly of his memory.... Suddenly, an unexpected doubt struck him. _ Would_ he still have disliked Roy, if the other man had lived? After all, he had long felt the same way about Allan. But life, it seemed, had a cruel way of eating away at the standards he'd once held, like a crooked merchant slowly dealing him his lot in smaller and smaller false measures, until he'd learned to be grateful for _any_ food, _any _shelter, _any _friendship.

No, he had certainly never expected to feel half this charitable – congenial, even – towards Allan-a-Dale. Let alone take his advice about anything - least of all women. But then, this had not been just another of Allan's disgraceful tactics for bedding kitchenmaids and tavern girls, but a different type of advice entirely. The kind Much was very much inclined to accept, even if it meant being far more forward than he had ever been in his life before.

He and Allan had come to understand each other a lot better in the last few months. The camp was quieter, these days - disproportionately so, considering that, now Tuck was with them, the gang was only smaller by one member - and often it was the type of silence even Much did not feel comfortable filling. So he had taken to watching and listening more carefully than before, and he had noticed things. Like the way Allan never said "I'm not being funny" any more, as if it went without saying. Or the strange reflex that seized him on the rare occasions he did crack a joke – glancing around for the briefest of moments, as if searching the monotone chorus of half-hearted male laughter for the warm, bubbling descant that was absent. The careful way he tended to the pigeon - that was how Much knew Allan had not been telling him how to be _like _him, but how to avoid it.

"_Tell her... Tell her she's perfect." _ _Tell her anything you like, but for God's sake __tell her__._

He supposed that all the outlaws - except for Tuck, who was presumably exempt (though who knew with the priests these days, except all-seeing God) - would have their own counsel to give on the subject of love, their hearts inscribed like stone tablets with the commandments they themselves had broken. _Stay with her,_ John would growl. _Don't leave her side. _

_Keep her safe, _Robin would add fiercely. _Whatever happens, whatever war you're fighting, she's more important. _

As for Much himself, if called on for advice he would say, _Don't let the bravest, loveliest girl you've ever met ride away on your horse, without taking a few moments to ask her where she might go, or what name she might use when she gets there. _

How could he have been so stupid?_ "When there is justice again, I will come and find you"_ - it had sounded very grand at the time, a fitting speech for the masterful hero he'd wanted her to think him. But in hindsight, he would have settled for impressing her a little less and actually having a chance to see her again.

None of the villages they'd passed through on the way back from Hull to Sherwood had yielded any clue, and nor had his surreptitious enquiries of travellers on the road before or since. And with each month that passed, the time when he would be free to leave the forest and scour England in earnest seemed no closer, and a despairing voice in his head asked why on earth he thought she'd wait for someone like him, anyway.

Really – but again, why should she bother? - there would be a better chance of _her _finding _him._ She'd shown a far greater skill than he at coming up with plans and putting them into practice. She had... she had _nerve_. A dangerous girl to have as your enemy – but to have her on your side... To have her _by_ your side, would be... Much sighed.

He had been foolish; there was no doubt of that. He should have asked her advice on the specifics of their reunion. She would have seen the difficulties at once, and found a way around them, he was certain of that. If only he hadn't been so determined to do everything himself...

It was just that, for those few days, he really had felt omnipotent – Earl of Bonchurch, magnanimously promising to save a whole village from hunger. And now all he had was a meagre sack of loaves and no way of multiplying them – and he was so _hungry_ himself.

As he mentally tallied the families waiting in Locksley for a share of today's delivery, his eyes flicked from one thatched roof to the next, and finally came to rest on one particular cottage. He stood for a moment, deep in thought, then plucked a long blade of drying grass and tied it around the flowers he'd been absent-mindedly gathering as he walked.

She'd said it could never happen. But in the two years since he and his master had come home – as he'd slowly sunk further and further into the hardship and misery he'd naively expected to leave behind for good - Much had come to realise that "never" seldom meant what it said.

Laying the posy carefully atop his cargo of bread in the sack, he straightened his shoulders and set off determinedly down the hill.

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_A/N: I'm aware that Kate's words were "Nothing could ever happen between us" - I (and Much!) am reflecting on the sense rather than the exact phrasing. :)_


End file.
